The Quivering Tree (2 page)

Occasionally, Miss Gosse would notice my distress and misinterpreting its cause, tell me kindly that, if only I concentrated, all – parallelograms, quadratic equations, the secrets of the universe – would be revealed. She was a great one for concentrating. Standing wedged with my luggage in the narrow hall of Chandos House, a knobbly hallstand nudging my back in an unfriendly way, I found myself willing her to concentrate on tea. Now that I had recovered from my illness, my appetite had recovered tenfold, and I was ravenous. Breakfast at St Giles that day had been of the sketchiest, and lunch non-existent with the moving men hovering, itching to whisk everything in the house away to London, the last remnants of food in the larder included. Disgorged at last by an empty house which would already have seemed a total stranger were it not for the discoloured rectangles left on the wallpaper that showed where our pictures had hung, we – the three of us, my mother, Alfred and I – had driven to the station with ages to spare before the train left for London: plenty of time to go and get something to eat if only the two grown-ups had given a thought to it, which they hadn't, and I didn't like to bring up the subject, it seemed so crass when my mother was in such a state.

It was funny. For as long as I could remember, my mother had mourned the cruel necessity which had made Norwich our home. London, I was instructed, was not only bigger, it was better in every possible way, a place where life was lived to the full as against the mere vegetable existence which was all that went on in the benighted provinces, or at any rate in the benighted province of East Anglia. She was forever, as she put it, ‘popping up to town' to spend a few days with one or other of her four sisters resident in the capital, either as a temporary escape to the full life, or even just to buy a new hat because London hats were, by definition, infinitely superior to those on sale in Norwich, even in posh shops like Bunting's or Chamberlains. When I asked her once why she had ever married my father and come to live in Norwich in the first place, if she disliked the city so much, she had opened her beautiful brown eyes wide and replied that everyone made sacrifices for love, an answer I found unsatisfactory in the extreme, since it in no way corresponded to my juvenile fantasies as to the nature of that mysterious quality.

But now that the moment of parting had come – almost come, rather, for a notice at the platfrom barrier announced a forty-minute delay – she paced to and fro, from the bookstall to the booking office and back again, tormenting herself over and over with the despairing question: was she doing the right thing?

Her indecision confused me beyond what had already become the normal confusion of those months following my father's death. How could it not be the right thing to go and live in London since that was what she wanted to do, and there was nothing now to stop her? After all, two of her children – my sister and the younger of my two brothers – were already living and working there; and Alfred, also a grown man, was going to be married as soon as, in the light of our bereavement, it was considered decent to do so. As for myself, I was taken care of, wasn't I, so why the eleventh-hour agony? It couldn't be because of my father that she thought she ought to stay where she was, because he was no more in Norwich than he was anywhere else except heaven, where he was bound to be, having been a sweet and lovely man.

All the same, I couldn't help wondering if my mother's last-minute second thoughts might not be on account of my father after all; if it didn't make her uncomfortable to think of him up there close to the throne of God, looking down all the time to see what she was up to, and thinking that she couldn't wait to be off the minute the coast was clear. I know his new address made
me
feel awful. Alive, my father had been exquisitely scrupulous about according his children their own private living space, mental and physical – but dead! The last thing I wanted was for him to burn in Hell, but oh! it was intolerable, knowing him in heaven and privy to absolutely everything that went on – everything! When, intending comfort, people told me not to grieve, that night and day he was watching over me, I wanted to shout, ‘He isn't! He isn't!' Whenever I went to the lavatory, I would whisper fiercely as I pulled down my knickers: ‘Don't look! Don't look!'

Even Alfred, my unfailingly kind brother, looked and sounded a little frayed after a half-hour of repeated assurances that yes, my mother was doing the right thing. I could tell by the way he scanned the railway lines converging in the distance that, like me, he was willing them to produce a train moving slowly over the points into Norwich Thorpe station. I'm not sure that, even as he reminded her that her sisters – our aunts – would be there in force at Liverpool Street to meet her, he did not send up a little prayer to the god of the London and North-Eastern Railway: ‘Hurry up, for Christ's sake!'

Maud, our maid
¹
was already ensconced in the new house, ready to let in the movers and tell them where the furniture and everything and everyone else was to go. In the meantime, George, Aunty Kay's chauffeur (she was the rich one), resplendent in his grey uniform and peaked cap, would drive the reunited sisters in the Seabrook to Aunty Kay's house where she would be able to relax, have a meal, put her feet up, until word came that the house was ready for her reception, down to the last hairpin.

The reference to a meal really did for me. Up till then I had been playing a private game to make time pass and divert my mind from my mother's and my own sufferings. Every time we approached the bookstall I strained to see how much I could read of the front pages of the newspapers displayed there, how many story titles on the covers of the magazines, the
Strand
, the
London, Argosy, Happy Mag
, before my mother turned on her louis heels and it was time to trail back to the booking office once more. Now, my hunger smote me with such force that if I hadn't seen with my own eyes that the larder there was bare I would have cut across Alfred's optimistic affirmations that of course she was doing the right thing with: ‘No, you're not! Let's go back to St Giles and never leave it again, ever!'

1. For more about Maud, see Opposite the Cross Keys (Constable, 1988)
   

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Driving away from the station, out of town by the Sprowston Road, a long pull-up past dingy houses which seemed to have nothing to do with the beautiful city centre where I had lived and had my being, I had felt too battered by my mother's emotions to feel any of my own, conscious only of the great void which throbbed inside me, expanding and contracting,
glug, glug
, like one of those volcanic mudholes they went in for in New Zealand.

‘Was the train late?' Miss Gosse now inquired. ‘We'd expected you earlier. What a pity you've missed tea!'

It was my introduction to the life of a lodger, a life where meals materialized only at pre-stated hours, and if you were late, hard cheese. No offer to make a fresh pot, no bringing back to the table of what was left of the bread and butter: between whiles, no hot snacks on tap in the kitchen, no larder overflowing with little somethings to keep you going until it was time once more to sit down to a proper meal. I had missed tea. How I missed it!

Alfred looked at me worriedly. After all, I was only just well again. Dr Parfitt had emphasized that I had to be careful, whatever that might mean. Afraid he might say something, I tugged surreptitiously at his jacket. Making demands, I knew instinctively, even if he didn't, was no way to get my new lodging life off to a good start.

A large square woman came into the hall through a door at the far end. As she reached the slash of light which came through the glass panels in the front door, I could see that she wore a long-sleeved overall with a design of purple and white shrubbery which echoed in a truly remarkable way the marbled pattern of her skin. Marbled not only described her complexion but also the extraordinary immobility of her features. When she spoke it was
snap
! Her lips moved the way a lizard moved, almost too fast to be seen before they froze again. Only a slight quiver of the heavy jowls, a tremor that never let up completely, gave the game away that she hadn't just that moment arrived on the boat with the Elgin marbles.

‘This is Mrs Benyon, our housekeeper,' said Miss Gosse, smiling. And, turning to the woman in question: ‘And this is Sylvia, our little guest.'

Guest! I thought bitterly, not taken in for a moment. A fine guest who didn't even qualify for a cup of tea!

Mrs Benyon looked at me without noticeable warmth and demanded, in a tone that was more London than Norfolk: ‘Horlicks or Bovril?'

The question took me aback, both because it was unexpected and because I hated both drinks equally.

‘We all have a mug of either Horlicks or Bovril at eight o'clock,' Miss Gosse explained with a touch of coyness, as if confessing to something a little on the naughty side. ‘Mrs Benyon needs to know which you prefer.'

I knew better than to say neither, thank you just the same. I said Bovril, not becase I liked the one any better than the other, but because the few times I had had to drink the stuff it had at least arrived with a couple of cream crackers in the saucer.

The housekeeper pointed to my sports equipment which, for want of anywhere else to put it, Alfred had propped against the hallstand.

‘That,' she pronounced, ‘will have to go under the stairs. The rest –' and she looked at my brother meaningly – ‘will need to be carried up.'

Alfred sprang forward with offers of assistance, but I could see the woman had made him nervous. So handsome, so good-humoured, he was used to people smiling at him. Disapproval threw him out of his stride. He grabbed at the bundle. As he did so the lacrosse stick twisted in the same unpredictable way it often twisted on the playing-field; banged against a brass tray which stood on the bit of hallstand which jutted out in front of the central mirror, and knocked it to the floor. Some letters ready for the post which had been placed on the tray slid across the linoleum.

As Alfred and I, stammering apologies, scrabbled red-faced to pick them up, I lifted my head to see the housekeeper looking across at Miss Gosse with a glaze of satisfaction on her marbled face. As loud as words, the look proclaimed: ‘What did I tell you?'

‘Accidents will happen.' Miss Gosse smiled, but she sounded a bit nervous herself. In the few moments I had lived in Chandos House I had learned that Mrs Benyon was a very powerful person.

My room at Chandos House was so small that Alfred, going ahead with the suitcase, made the mistake of assuming it was some kind of anteroom, with the proper bedroom somewhere beyond. It was, in fact, built over the hall and was of comparable proportions, only slightly smaller, part of its space having been snaffled by the first floor landing. Once he had realized that was it, my brother was forced to put the suitcase on the bed, which I could tell immediately Mrs Benyon, wheezing up the stairs behind us to keep an eye on what we were up to, didn't like one little bit, only there was nowhere else to put it, if we were to be able to move about the room at all. As it was, the box of books had to go under the bed, which wasn't such a bad idea considering how the latter dipped in the middle.

The only other furniture was a straw-seated chair on which were a box of matches and a green metal candlestick fitted with a white candle, plus, in front of the window, a tall, narrow chest of drawers with a mirror perched on top, too high to see into, except on tiptoe. A shallow niche, fixed up with a rail and curtained off in the same faded chintz as hung on either side of the window, served as a wardrobe. I could tell just by looking at him that Alfred – not out loud: he wasn't going to risk offending Mrs Benyon, whose important position in the household he had noted, just as I had – thought it was a poky little room, but I loved it on sight, taking its smallness as a positive virtue. I saw myself curled up inside it as in a chrysalis, snug as a bug in a rug until the moment came – as come it must – for me to fly free towards the sun, a butterfly on iridescent wing.

In the meantime, it
was
dark, though: darker than I cared for, owing to a branch of the untidy tree outside spreading its bulk clear across the window. Its leaves, pressed against the glass like nosy urchins, were almost completely round, with shallow, rounded teeth that did not look at all aggressive. The leaf stalks were ones you could be sorry for, they looked so weak and defenceless. No wonder the leaves shivered and quivered, afraid of dropping off altogether.

It was so dark that Alfred looked round for the electric light switch. The housekeeper, divining his intention, actually chuckled, the marble, though only momentarily, turning into rubber before resuming its accustomed rigidity. ‘You'll look a long time for one o' them in this house. We only got gas here.'

‘Gas!'

We both of us looked up at the light dangling in front of the window, and sure enough, there it was – a gas mantle with a beaded frill and two little pulleys with rings at the ends for regulating the flame, or so I supposed; also a further box of matches on top of the chest of drawers. We were astonished. No doubt in 1930 there were in Norwich homes besides this one where electricity had not yet penetrated, but only the cottages of the poor, surely: not houses like Chandos House.

‘Old Mr Gosse didn't hold with it,' Mrs Benyon condescended to explain. ‘Said it wasn't natural, all those wires going every which way. One day we'd be struck by lightning, sure as eggs are eggs.'

‘I'm surprised he thought gas any safer. Does Mr Gosse still live here?' Alfred wanted to know.

‘Passed over eleven years come November. But Miss Gosse wouldn't go and do something he wouldn't want her to. She knows what respect is.'

‘Quite!' Alfred agreed hastily, but I could see that my big brother was worried about me, about lighted matches, escaping gas and all that. Since my father's death he had increasingly taken on the paternal role. ‘Think you can manage to light it, Sylvia, and turn it off properly?'